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Both Amazon.com and bn.com occasionally have the book in stock, but availability
seems to be erratic.

Quotable

The only truly sustainable urban transport modes are walking and cycling, and
a transport policy that took environmental concerns seriously would promote
public transport as a second-best alternative to these modes. And international
experience seem to show that even the best public transport in the world will
not bring about a reduction in car use unless it is also accompanied by direct
disincentives for car travel. But the public transport question is
important in its own right. Not everyone is young or agile enough
to do most of their travel on foot or by cycle, while in sprawling cities
and ex-urban areas distances are frequently too great for walking
or cycling. And restraint of cars is likely to be politically acceptable
only if the community can see that viable alternatives exist.

I take some issue with Mees's contention that only walking and biking
are sustainable. Switzerland ran for many years on sustainable energy,
from their hydropower installations. If total energy consumption is
reduced and sustainable supplies considerably increased, public transport
can be a genuinely sustainable service. Otherwise, Mees is right on target.

World News Notes & Comment

Current events related to urban automobiles during the past two months.

Happy Carfree Amsterdam

A poll taken after the 24 September 2000 carfree Sunday in Amsterdam
showed broad support for carfree Sundays. Of those living in the inner city,
some 50% would like to see carfree Sundays once a month,
and 25% support making every Sunday a carfree day. All in all, 75% of
the inner city residents were fairly or very positive.
Even shop owners were in favor - 63% support a continuation of the carfree Sunday.
There was apparently no significant decline in cash register receipts.

AT5 Teletext
Amsterdam
6 December 2000

One reason for the broad support may be that those living in the inner
city were allowed to drive out of town (should they really need a car
that day), although they were not allowed to drive back in until evening.

Happy Carfree Europe

The European Car Free Cities Initiative has released a poll conducted among
residents of France and Italy following the 1999 carfree day. The results
are indicative of great support for less traffic and more sociable cities:

Notice that 85% of the respondents thought that the carfree day was
a good idea, and that 65% would like to see it repeated at least
once a week. And keep your eye on those 16% who want every day to be
a carfree day. They outnumber the 11% who don't ever want a carfree day.
Notice also that very few people do not have an opinion on this topic!

Earth Carfree Day 2001

Earth Carfree Day 2001 will be held on Thursday, 19 April.
An open planning effort is now under way, coordinated by
The Commons and the Earth Day Network. The goal is to "spark and support
thousands of celebratory events and striking demonstrations around the world,
all based on the common theme of personal responsibility, citizen-based activism,
and new public/private/community partnership."

Forging Ahead in Europe

Forum Vauban is the community organization that has been the driving force behind
the mixed-use, nearly carfree redevelopment of an old military base near Freiburg,
in southwestern Germany. The Forum obtained EU funding to develop a carfree
concept at Vauban and to resolve the legal and organizational problems of building
and operating a carfree development. The Vauban site is large: 94 acres, and will
be home to some 2000 families and 600 jobs by the year 2006. In the first phase,
130 units will be completely carfree, with a further 280 units having access to
car parking at a remote location. Those who want parking have to pay extra
for it, about $15,000. The parking exists only because the city refused to negotiate
to below 240 parking spaces. However, phase II has only 80 spaces. (Provisions have
been made to build more parking spaces should that become essential.)

In Cologne, the city planning department and Car Free Cologne (a citizens' organization)
have identified four sites that could be developed into 300-400 carfree housing
units each. The sites are already near good public transport, shopping, and recreation.
A favorable market survey has convinced the city to continue to pursue the option.

"Europeans Push the Envelope"Urban Ecology
Spring 2000

You're Not Serious!

Until recently in Bogotá, Columbia, the 30% who owned cars tyrannized
everybody else. But the mayor's office found a solution that hasn't
been tried anywhere else, as far as I am aware: humor. Today,
drivers observe pedestrian crossings, actually stop at red lights,
and don't park on the sidewalk. Simple humor was the tool. The city hired
mimes to go into the streets and model how pedestrians could stand up
for their rights. Mimes would approach a vehicle breaking a law, say
intruding into a crosswalk. The mime would point at the car, point at
the crosswalk, point back at the car and mimic backing up motions
until the hapless driver, in the presence of gawkers, would back up
his vehicle. Exaggerated thanks followed, and the mime encouraged the
onlookers to applaud. The streets of Bogotá are now much safer than before.

Annette SimmonsThe Story Factor:
Inspiration, Influence and Persuasion
Through the Art of Storytelling
Read Chapter One on line

I've been searching for years for an effective way to tame drivers and
limit their outrages. I never thought of this one, and it seems to work.
Can we get it widely adopted?

Rail's on a Roll

Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston are on a roll, and it's on rails.
Applications for federal funding for new tram systems have
doubled in the past decade. In the same period, rail ridership has risen 44%.
What is most interesting is that this interest in tram systems comes not
from the established "transit cities" of the Northeast but precisely those
most auto-dependent Sunbelt cities in the South and West.
The reasons aren't too hard to find. In Phoenix, 80-90% of air pollution
is caused by cars, and the US EPA is breathing down the city's neck to do
something about the problem. While federal dollars have paid some of the costs,
the cities are enacting sales tax increases to pay the remainder of the cost
of building these systems. Even the Los Angeles metro has achieved significant
ridership, this in the midst of the archetypal auto-centric city.

When people start looking for solutions, buses are the first thing they think of.
Then comes rail. Buses are for other people. Trains are for everybody.

Metro-Freight, Coming Soon to the Ruhr Valley

Truck traffic through the 40-mile Ruhr corridor is so thick that the
average drive time between the corridor's far points, the cities of
Duisburg and Dortmund, is an aggravating two hours. Backups sometimes
stretch 200 miles, spilling out of the valley, home to 6 million people
and much of Germany's heavy industry. Engineering professor Dietrich Stein
at the Ruhr University has proposed moving freight in an underground system
of automated cargo capsules traveling through pipelines, and it looks like
a 45-mile prototype system will indeed be constructed, at a cost of $450 million.

Stein said, "Every year businesses and industries in Germany waste 200 billion marks
[US$90 billion] on time lost to traffic jams that delay workers getting to
their jobs, supplies getting to manufacturers, and purchases getting to customers.
If we could eliminate most of the trucks by creating an underground delivery system,
that would free up the roads for car drivers." (Stein appears not to understand
the phenomenon of induced traffic - if major reductions in truck traffic occur,
car traffic is certain to increase, bringing back congestion delays.)

The Ruhr Valley is already so clogged with highways that new ones aren't seriously
considered, so some other system is needed. Metro-freight, as proposed in
Carfree Cities, was based on the use of standard shipping containers.
The German proposal is based on the much smaller standard European shipping pallet.
The proposed system, dubbed "Cargo Cap," uses electrically-propelled drones
about 5 feet in diameter and long enough to carry two loaded Euro-pallets.
These vehicles run in a tunnel, probably beneath existing highways. The prototype
system will run east-west between rail terminals just outside the extremes of the
corridor. Side tracks will lead to 13 loading stations below major shopping centers
and large manufacturers. Departing capsules would remove refuse and recyclables.

It is said that the system might eventually be extended to every business and
household, replacing the need for overnight express, grocery and furniture
deliverers, and mail carriers. The economics of this seems highly debatable, however.

The Institute for Economic Research had initially regarded the project as too
expensive, but the worsening traffic chaos and the cost-effectiveness
of the proposal eventually earned the support of the Institute, which said
that there was no above-ground solution to the freight distribution mess.

While Cargo Cap may seem futuristic, the concept predates World War II. The Third Reich created a subterranean mail system in Berlin, and Russia and Japan have underground pipelines that carry raw materials between mines and factories, Stein said. In the Netherlands, an unmanned shuttle is under construction to carry flowers and bulbs from Delft to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport for export.

I don't really see the Cargo Cap system as the solution to freight distribution.
The world's freight moves mostly in standardized shipping containers, and any system that
cannot accommodate containers will be highly limited. It is for this
reason that the metro-freight system proposed in Carfree Cities
is based entirely on the use of containers, except for final local delivery.
Local delivery is another weakness of the Cargo Cap proposal, which will never be
cheap enough to install directly to individual homes. Any real solution will
have to depend on direct delivery to major freight customers (such as provided
by both Cargo Cap and metro-freight), with final local delivery by freight
bike or small, battery-powered delivery vehicles.

EU Eyeing an Energy Windfall

The STREET project of the European Commission's Car Free Cities Initiative
reports on the range of likely energy savings from a variety of projects.
Some highlights of the most important measures:

5-41% Guided and electric buses

5-50% Car sharing

35-50% Access control

2-39% Urban road pricing

"Sustainable Transport and Rational Use of Energy in European Towns:"
Report of a series of Car Free Cities seminars
European Commission
Directorate General XVII: Energy
Published with the support of the SAVE II ProgramSave II web site

Notice where this is coming from: the European Commission. Notice also that
the biggest savings comes from "access control," which means keeping most cars
out of an area. That gives the greatest savings. This idea lives right next door
to the completely carfree concept.

Pinch at the Pump

According to Friends of the Earth, drivers are starting to buy smaller,
more fuel-efficient cars in the face of rising fuel prices, especially
in Europe, where fuel prices are already fairly high. These more efficient
cars are generally also less polluting, solving two problems at once.
FoE has campaigned vigorously in the UK to stop any roll-back of excise
taxes on gasoline, despite the truckers' protests this past fall.

"Fuel Prices Hit Drivers"Car Busters
Northern Winter 2000

George W. Bush thinks that current US fuel economy standards are "just about right."
Uh huh.

Paying the Polluter

The "polluter pays" principle is reasonably well established, but the practice
is different, according to an article by Loriee Evans. US taxpayers subsidize
petroleum companies to the tune of $3-11 billion a year, according to the
Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In order to ensure that the gravy train
continues to roll, the petroleum lobby handed out $35 million to Congressional
candidates and PACs during the last decade. The oil depletion allowance is
alive and well, and costs taxpayers about a dollar a barrel. Further subsides
take the guise of immediate tax write-offs for exploration costs and tax breaks
for extracting "hard-to-reach" oil. Finally, as in the case of the Exxon Valdez
disaster, oil companies can write off almost the entire cost of environmental clean-up.

"How WE Pay Oil Companies to Pollute"Auto-Free Times
Spring 2000

Those billions of dollars are a very nice return for the oil companies
on their paltry $35 million investment. Campaign finance reform, anyone?

And in case you're interested, $5 billion was awarded in the Valdez
spill case, but the money still hasn't reached Alaska residents damaged
by the spill, now 11 years ago.

Scientific Smart Growth

Scientific American recently raised smart growth to the status of science
by running an article entitled, "The Science of Smart Growth." The article
opens with a photograph of an auto-centric street corner, probably in the
southwest, with 10 or 11 lanes of traffic in each direction, and surrounded
by acres of parking. The "smart growth" is shown on the next page, and to
casual observation looks an awful lot like conventional suburban sprawl. What's most
interesting is that this location is actually a restored downtown area
of Louisville. The cars have apparently been tucked away out of sight in
the usual New Urbanism back alleys, but the streets are still very wide,
the front lawns still broad and forbidding social barriers. It may be better
than what they're building out in the cow pastures in most places, but
how much better? The article does give a good background of the history of sprawl,
little of which is likely to come as news to readers of this newsletter.

Andrés Duany contributed a rural-to-urban "transect," starting at
one end with low density rural patterns, and moving steadily towards higher density
and more urban character. Unfortunately, the transect ends with medium-density
downtown blocks that are built only two or three stories high. Were the
transect to have been continued to its logical conclusion, it would have ended
with a high-density, carfree urban block. Maybe next time.

"The Science of Smart Growth"Scientific American
December 2000

The most import aspect of this article is that it appeared in a mainstream
science magazine. Unfortunately, no mention was made of the obvious extension
of smart growth: no growth in urban boundaries at all. There's ample room in
US cities for growth, much of it in or near city centers. All that's
needed is to turn some of those parking lots into buildings and add some tram
lines to take up the slack.

Guest Editorial

Mass Traffic and Metro Transit

The infestation of autos makes cities little more than those spaces in
the air where flies hover and dive-bomb one another. Cities could be
carfree and carefree, sans traffic, noise, and smog. As car density
drops, human density can rise, without anyone feeling overcrowded, such as
in European cities. If cities are to become more compact, somethingís gotta
give. It wonít be homes, shops, factories, schools, playgrounds, or
parks. It must be the car. Itís not city vs. country or density vs.
sprawl, itís livability vs. the automobile.

Humans leave behind an enormous ecological footprint, or more precisely,
tire track. Cars consume more land - sites and resources - than do
people. Cars, creators of congestion and pollution, need overly wide
streets and vast parking lots, paving over erstwhile gardens to give
cars a place for repose.

In US cities, half the surface area is devoted to cars. Count the acreage
for streets, parking lanes, parking lots, parking garages, dealer lots,
used car lots, junk yards, gas stations, parts stores, auto insurance
offices, traffic cop shops, and traffic courts. Itís far more acreage than a
MOV (multi-occupancy vehicle) needs, and more than a SOV (single-occupancy
vehicle) can afford, were it forced to pay its own way.

Around cities, sprawl needs cars. What drove residents out of downtown?
The usual suspect, the car, was merely a convenient ride. Actually, it
was the lure of cold cash - not a gain but a savings. And despite our
present dependency on cars, the drive to profit is powerful enough to
bring people back.

To draw people in, take taxes off peopleís attempts to make a living.
Where taxes are low or absent on homes, businesses, and incomes, people
move in. To get people to leave their cars behind, collect the rental
value of sites, which is highest in the metro center.
In order to afford their land dues (land tax, or land use fee, or deed fee, etc.),
downtown land owners would then turn lots for cars into structures for people. This
property tax shift, the cutting edge proposal of groups from the Sierra
Club to the Libertarian Party of Maryland, is the salient feature of
geonomics.

Applying geonomics in-fills a city, providing more riders for public
transport, justifying more routes and higher frequency of service.
To fund the expansion, the
high site value around transit stops could be tapped (as noted in a 1990
study by Walthers et al. for US DOT).
Check classified ads listing
apartments for rent; often they sell their nearness to transit stops. San
Franciscoís BART, Washington, DCís Metro, and most other light rail systems
raised site value by more than enough to pay for both
building and operating the system - meaning people could ride fare-free.

As riding becomes convenient while remaining a bargain, and parking grows
inconvenient while rising in cost, more people would switch from driving
to riding. Customers could shop via the Internet; stores could deliver
goods during times of lowest use of streets by passenger vehicles. Less
traffic allows cities to transform streets for bikes, pedestrians, sidewalk
cafes, and street performers. Livelier streets would also raise nearby
site values, pouring more site rent into city coffers.

As more urbanites give up their cars, theyíd grow the demand for some
kind of public transport system extending into the surrounding countryside.
Were metro government to place a surcharge on fuel to cover pollution
costs, that would bring the cost of driving from background, where it gets
overlooked, to foreground. Then the more fuel-efficient modes, e.g., public
transit, become a better bargain. Besides increasing bus and train
service into the rural parts of the region (as was the norm just a century ago), local
authorities might also construct bike paths. Instead of putting a toll on
the paths, the locality need only zone some bike intersections for
refreshment stands and take the highest bid from Starbucks, Coffee
People, Orange Julius, and others. As people in both the city and country
unload their cars to the junk smelters, the market would respond with
competing transport: bus, jitney, car sharing, etc.

Curing American metro regions of dependency upon cars does not mean
abandoning the American vision of utmost happiness - perpetual motion. It
just means that in functionally integrated neighborhoods, trips will be
shorter and taken in a variety of modes. By getting vehicles to pay for
the land they take, geonomics gets people out of their cars, and into the
worlds of healthy walking and of comfortable coaches on their own
right-of-ways.

What you can do: Walk. Pedal. Hail a cab. Take a jitney. Ride the bus.
When necessary, use a hybrid shared car. Request delivery
service. Patronize sidewalk cafes. Convert that garage to a granny flat.
Kick cars out of your urban core and dance the night away. Tell all the
celebrants that when the land youíre partying on rises in value, that
increase ought to be shared. Place ads on transit vehicles that say,
"Free rides when the rent around transit stops funds transit." Or think
of a more compelling wording.

Jeffery J. Smith
President of the Geonomy Society,
publisher of The Geonomist,
and organizer of events and tours to places
considering reform of taxes and subsidies.

The editor is certainly not a Libertarian and does not support many
aspects of the Libertarian party line. That said, taxes on land,
as opposed to taxes on buildings, can be a highly useful tool in
encouraging appropriate high-density development of valuable sites.
This idea has incited a brisk discussion on the Carfree_Cities forum.

Article

You Can Bike There, But Can You Park Your Bike?

By Richard Hartger

Now that our roads are being widened, bike lanes are being added,
and bike trails are being extended, itís becoming easier and safer
for bicyclists to commute to work and school, and to run errands.
But once we get there, finding a place to safely secure bikes remains
a barrier to seamless bike transportation. When we commute by bike
we are often forced to lock our bikes to lampposts, benches, bushes,
and the like. This can damage public fixtures, landscaping,
and it can block public access. And if a business does provide a bike rack,
itís usually placed in a dim, out-of-the way location, subject to theft and vandalization.
The lack of convenient, secure parking makes cyclists hesitant to commute by bike.

A bike network will only be used to its fullest potential if secure bike parking
is available. Bicycle parking facilities fall into two classes,
short-term and long-term. Short-term bicycle parking facilities allow
users to lock frame and wheel to something secure.
[In Amsterdam, even seemingly secure racks have been twisted apart
with a long lever, releasing the bike. ed.]
Examples include the inverted U rack, and the standard front wheel rack -
a design that subjects the bike to damage.
Short-term parking is suitable for those who only need to lock up their bikes
for an hour or two, provided, of course, that the rack is in a visible and
convenient location. Long-term bicycle parking facilities provide full
security and protection from the weather at such locations as
apartments, schools, stores, offices, and transit stops.

Steadily more employers are committed to reducing single occupancy vehicle trips.
In particular, hospitals are working hard to become more bike friendly by
providing both short and long-term bike parking.
Bicycle lockers are being placed near the building entrances.
Short-term parking is provided with the usual inverted U-racks, sometimes
located in garages or near entrances.

The cost for bicycle parking facilities varies between $125 per bike for a
quality inverted U-rack, to about $1000 per bike, for a quality bike locker.
While these costs may seem high, consider that a paved parking space
for a single car costs $3,000 or more, and each space in a parking garage
costs between $8,000 and $25,000. And that doesnít even include the cost
for land and maintenance (which can be up to $300 per year per parking space).
When you consider these costs, bicycle parking facilities seem positively cheap.

Many American state and local governments plan major expansions of park-and-ride systems
to meet air quality and congestion management goals. However, bike-and-ride
is a far more cost-effective approach to encouraging alternatives to driving.
A 1980 Chicago study (CATS) found that the installation of secure bicycle parking
at rail stations would reduce hydrocarbon emissions at a public cost of $311 per ton,
compared to $96,415 per ton for an express park-and-ride service, $214,950
for a feeder bus service, and $3,937 per ton for a commuter rail
carpool matching service.

Bike lockers offer these other advantages:

Positive, and environmentally-friendly image

Improved employee health

Reduced traffic congestion in the neighborhood

Fewer unsightly parked cars

Land development regulations typically require developers to install so many
automobile parking spaces per thousand square feet of floor area.
Bike parking advocates should encourage their city or county commissioners
to permit bike parking exchanges for at least a percentage of
the usual auto parking spaces.

Richard Hartger is President of
Cycle-Safe Corporation,
a manufacturer of secure bike parking. The company is involved
in pilot bike parking programs. For more information
contact him at 888-950-6531.

Book Review

A Very Public Solution:
Transport in the Dispersed City

Paul Mees

Melbourne University Press
ISBN 0 522 84867 2
A$32.95 softcover

At last we have a book that challenges all of the New Right's assumptions
regarding the universal applicability of the Holy Market as an effective, efficient
arbiter of practically everything. While the market certainly has its place,
that place is not the provision of urban transportation. Mees critically examines
the tracts offered by the New Right as "proofs" of the effectiveness
of the market in transport.

As it happens, Mees grew up in Melbourne, a
city with market-driven transport, a place often cited as proof that
this approach provides cost-effective, comfortable public transport. His
experience as a schoolboy was quite enough to convince him that the
resulting "utopia" was, well, for the birds.

The basic thrust of the book is that large capital investments
are not necessary to provide good public transport, but that
a customer-oriented operation is essential. He argues that, for
a variety of reasons, free-market public transport services are
doomed to failure. The only exception is when a central planning
agency establishes routes, fares, and ticketing systems while
contracting with private operators to run the service. Even here,
it is essential that all the fares be paid to the central authority;
the operators receive fixed amounts for operating the service.
This arrangement is the only way in which easy transfers, logical
route structures, and convenient schedules can be developed.
Free-market competition is antithetical to these arrangements.
Some people are getting the idea:

The demise of the optimism of the 1960s [cars as the answer to everything]
can be charted through the three editions of Brian Richard's book
Transport in Cities. The first edition, published in 1966, is a catalogue
of monorails, people movers, and other gadgets; the third edition,
published in 1990, talks about traffic calming, pedestrianisation
and timed-transfer networks. The focus has shifted from engineering
to planning. [page 79]

The free enterprise public transport model has received surprisingly little
sustained criticism, in contrast with the avalanche of books, journal papers
and reports which have appeared in its support. Thus, while more than
a dozen books arguing the case for the market model have appeared since
1980, I am not aware of a single book taking the opposing view (other
than this one). [page 109]

One of the most potent arguments against the free-market model is
that transfers between routes become difficult and expensive.
"[F]rom the passenger's point of view, transferring between services
is an inconvenience; requiring an extra fare for the disservice is
adding insult to injury." At least when a single operator (i.e., public)
runs an entire system, those who are forced to transfer are usually
not required to pay extra. When the New York City Transit Authority
streamlined transfers between buses and the subway, ridership surged,
no surprise to anyone who actually uses public transport.

It is interesting to quote a quote - Mees quoting Robert Cervero
on the need for quality service:

Transportation experts have long regarded the ease of physically
accessing transit facilities, along with the maintenance of frequent,
reliable schedules, to be key determinants of whether travelers opt
for transit or not. Commuters particularly abhor the hassle of
transferring or anything that disrupts the process of making a trip....
Near effortless connections of modes thus become imperative if motorists
are to be won over to transit. [quoted on page 134]

Mees concludes Part I with this succinct summary:

The approach to public transport planning seen in Zurich and
some other European cities is diametrically opposed to the free
enterprise model. Flexibility for users is created through fixed,
integrated, high-quality routes and easy transfers, rather than
through the 'creative chaos' of the market. And in contrast to the
cities cited as examples of successful free enterprise public transport,
the planned model can measure up to what Hilaire Belloc called 'the
tyranny of fact,' because there are real-world examples supporting
it that can withstand critical scrutiny....
[page 151]

Everyone who has not yet been convinced by the dismal results of privatizing
public transport in Great Britain needs to read this book; those who already
understand this point will find the arguments usefully marshaled.

Reviewed by J.H. Crawford

One little tidbit: the fuel consumption of Australian passenger
cars was in 1995 at almost precisely the same level as in 1963.
So much for more fuel-efficient cars. Does anyone happen to have
the same numbers for the US or European auto fleets?

Briefly Noted

This book shows how physical planning greatly influences our daily
outdoor activities. It considers how outdoor activities and
life between buildings are affected by planning.
By bringing buildings closer to each
other and making the streets pedestrian friendly, more
frequent social interaction occurs among residents. Also considered
is scale and dimensions of buildings and
streets and how these are affected by our senses.

The author also reviews our urban planning ideology, the physical
and social aspects of Middle Ages planning, the transition from freely
evolved cities to planned cities, the disappearance of streets, and post-war
planning practices. It stresses that medieval cities gathered
people and events in streets and squares while encouraging pedestrian traffic and time
spent outdoors, something that current planning practice fails to achieve.

About one-third of the book discusses
the design of spaces for walking, standing, sitting, seeing, hearing and
talking. Gehl believes that these small components are actually what
determines whether or not the space between buildings
is pleasant and lively. The author also considers protection from
weather, a matter often overlooked by careless planners.

The studies and surveys presented in the book were from Australia, Europe
and the USA. The book includes many statistics and diagrams,
such as pedestrian traffic before and after closing a street to vehicular
traffic.

Hot New Links

Openbaar Reisinformatie (in Dutch). How to do transit information right.
(Click on the Reisadvies button to get to the trip planner.) Unfortunately, the service is so
popular that the server is sometimes overloaded.